Meal for One: Steak & Chips

One of my favourite meals is steak and chips. It’s easy to make and delicious. I normally replace chips with wedges, as they’re healthy, oven chips suck and I don’t own a deep fat fryer. It takes a bit longer to make, but it’s worth it. Veg is normally an issue, I normally have some sweetcorn with it, but my girlfriend and I decided to experiment this weekend by making a breaded, stuffed mushroom.

For this, you’re going to need:

• One (large) potato


• Olive oil


• Steak (your choice, I normally go for sirloin from a supermarket butcher)


• A mushroom (we used normal closed cup ones, but I suspect the big flat ones will have been better)


• Garlic


• Mixed herbs


• A piece of bread (we used wholemeal, but there’s no reason you can’t use something else)


• Some cheese

We didn’t have many mushrooms (only 2, in fact), because it was a spur of the moment thing, so we had sweetcorn as well, but that’s definitely not necessary if you have enough mushrooms!

The wedges normally take the longest to make, so start by peeling your potato and chopping it up into wedge shaped pieces. Boil the kettle and then whack them in a pan to parboil for around 7 minutes. Once the potato goes on the hob, preheat your oven to 220ºC.

Whilst the potatoes are boiling, dice a garlic clove, and then get a roasting tin out suitable for the wedges. Once your 7 minutes are up, drain the potatoes, transfer them into the roasting tin, and then coat in olive oil, the garlic and some mixed herbs for flavour. Then whack it in the oven for 40 minutes, remembering to turn over half way through.

Now, it’s time to make your breadcrumbs. We used a food processor on a slice of bread in a jug, and then diced another clove of garlic and mixed that in (add more if you like it really garlicy!). Now, remove the stems to the mushrooms and put your favourite cheese in the cup, and then cover with your breadcrumbs. We tried to add some olive oil to get it to stick together, but it didn’t really work (suggestions on how to get the breadcrumbs to stick to the mushrooms better would be appreciated!). Ideally this should take you 20 minutes, so you’ve got 20 minutes left on the wedges. Flip the potatoes and add the mushrooms to the tin (they’ll need about 20 minutes).

Now, put some oil in a pan and heat it (but not so hot the oil is smoking – that’ll just make it burn), and then turn it down to a medium-high heat, then add the steak. Timing the steak is always the trickiest bit, but I’ve found 4-and-a-half minutes on each side works well for medium. This should work so your steak is done about 3/4 minutes before the potatoes, so take it off the heat and leave your steak to “rest” for the last 5 minutes. When your potatoes and mushrooms are done, get them out, dish it all out, add vinegar, salt, ketchup and whatever else you want, and then enjoy!

Nom!